Focused Map: Roads to Power

Uploaded · Published January 12, 2026 · Updated March 15, 2026

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Author: iPlayPoorly

Last revision: 15 Feb at 06:08 UTC (1)

File size: 100.66 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

What:

As requested by 日本天皇麦克阿瑟.
Reduces the playable area to regions in and around the Middle East and Byzantine Empire.

Why:

Lag reduction. I’d like to play without the bloat of tens of thousands of characters in far flung realms with which I’ll never interact. The smaller map mods in the workshop are still too broad or went a little too narrow for tastes, so I make my own.

Notable Changes:

Titles:
- Most regions have been made impassable. The titles and characters from those regions have been removed.
- The duchies of Istria and Krain have changed to the dejure of the kingdoms of Italy and Croatia, respectively, as happens in the ‘Form Archduchy of Austria’ decision.
- The kingdom of Africa has changed to the dejure of the empire of Arabia.
- All steppe territories in Volga-Ural have changed to the dejure of the Pontic or Caspian Steppes.
- The Holy Roman Emperor is given the county of Aquileia in 1066 and 1178. Don’t expect them to keep control of the Italians for long without German support.
- Most rulers have gained independence if they were vassals of now-out-of-bounds realms.
- There are a lot of other minor county and barony shifts to clean up the borders of the map.
Decisions:
- Decisions were removed if they didn’t make sense within the context of the map but were still showing up. (Secure Iberian Foothold, Take Stewardship of the Sacred River, etc.)
- ‘Secure the Mediterranean‘ no longer requires Mallorca.
- ‘Dismantle German Pretenders‘ no longer requires having titles in Germany.
- ‘Found the Varangian Guard‘ no longer requires having Norse subjects.
- ‘Restore the HRE‘ only requires holding the Kingdom of Italy and a realm size of 60 (down from 120).
Other:
- Custom bookmarks have been made to provide a cohesive presentation.
- Adjusted holy sites to all be within map bounds. Not all religions will have an equal number of holy sites.

Known Bugs and Issues:

Everything seems stable and there were no crashes during testing, which consisted of running the game for 50+ years at each starting date a bunch of times.

Incompatibilities: